Sunday, January 25, 2015

That this does not bring the full wrath of the U.S. Justice Department down on these schools is a terrible sign that the Dominionists are winning the battle with the Constitution, and all of us are doomed.

Far from an isolated incident on the border of church and state,
Venue Church’s involvement in Florida’s public schools is part of a
national trend. In the evangelical world, the past twenty years have
seen the rise of a franchise organizational model, in which a single
national or international entity works with local “religious
entrepreneurs” to install churches in public-school buildings, or in
other relatively affordable facilities like movie theaters, rather than
fund its own buildings.

Venue Church appears to be independent, but other churches in public
schools are more closely allied with broad evangelical networks.
Thirteen miles away, the Celebration Orlando Church, located in Howard
Middle School, is part of the Association of Related Churches, a
Birmingham,
Alabama–based network that works with “church planters” to
assist them in launching and expanding new churches. In 2006, ARC
planted nine; in 2009, it was averaging around fifty new church plants
per year. Today, with a more developed structure, ARC is training and
coaching hundreds of church planters annually.

Evangelical networks that have planted churches in public schools
across the United States include Redeemer, Vineyard, the Evangelical
Covenant Church, Sovereign Grace, Victory Outreach, Morningstar and many
dozens of others. Acts29, a Seattle-based evangelical coalition that
has started 350 churches across the nation in the past five years,
estimates that some 16 percent of its church plants meet in
public-school spaces.

A 2007 national survey by LifeWay, a Christian research agency, found
that 12 percent of newly established Protestant churches met in public
schools. Today, that number is surely higher. In many cities, just about
every public-school auditorium is rented to a church plant on Sunday
morning.
In some places, houses of worship have operated inside public schools
for years without paying any rent at all—a situation that, in New York
City at least, has led to an ongoing battle in the courts. Even when
rent is paid, the arrangement is a boon for churches, which are able to
obtain safe and comfortable facilities, as well as furniture, heating
and air-conditioning, and other benefits, for a fraction of the cost of
financing their own facilities.

In recent years, the movement to plant churches has had a particular
focus on cities. In October 2014, Movement Day—a conference at the
Marriott Marquis in New York City—convened more than 1,000 pastors and
other church members to focus on providing social services and bringing
the Gospel to the urban “unchurched.” Movement Day speakers advocated
“church/school partnerships.” One panel on education brought together
Pastor Chip Sweney; Dorothy Parker-Jarrett, the principal of Summerour
Middle School in Norcross, Georgia; and Terri Hoye, who champions church
volunteers mentoring in public schools. As Hoye commented, “Once [the
door to the public schools] is open, it is wide open!”

This phenomenon has given rise to organizations such as Kids Hope
USA, which “equips [churches] to mobilize into the schools.” Kids Hope
USA has made possible over 1,000 partnerships between churches and
public schools. The program it facilitates consists of tutoring and
mentoring. Participants in such partnerships are supposed to abide by a
strict separation of church and state and refrain from proselytizing.

But the leaders of some of the religious entities involved in these
types of partnerships are clear in their view that the separation of
church and state is a “myth.” In Texas, for example, where the Oak Cliff
Bible Fellowship has established “church-school partnerships” between
evangelical entities and over sixty Dallas-area schools, senior pastor
Tony Evans has a clear message for those who think that public education
and sectarian religion need to be kept separate: “God never intended
that such a separation exist in His world.”

What does partnership look like for Oak Cliff? Church representatives
implement a “Kingdom Agenda Strategy” by acting as student mentors,
participating in academic tutoring and character-education classes. The
latter include abstinence-until-marriage teachings and promote a narrow,
religion-driven idea of what constitutes an acceptable moral life.

In Raleigh, North Carolina, Crossroads Fellowship produced a slick
video promoting its own Adopt-a-School initiative. “One hour a week of
your time could be a future and eternity in Christ for a kid,” a woman
in the video explains. “All of us are called to be a missionary in our
own backyard,” a middle-age man adds. “We just want to show the love of
Christ,” says another. “Adopt-a-School is going to ‘ping’ on that in a
powerful way.”

While many of the church groups in public schools market themselves
as “nondenominational,” evangelicals of a generally conservative type
overwhelmingly dominate this new field. The leading groups are committed
to the inerrancy of the Bible. Some, such as Morningstar, draw heavily
on Dominionism—the idea that Christians should seek to dominate all
aspects of secular politics and society until the return of Jesus
Christ. Mark Driscoll, a controversial founder of Acts29 who left the
organization after scandals involving allegations of plagiarism and
psychological abuse, is known for his unapologetic commitment to
male-centered authoritarianism. “We live in a completely pussified
nation,” he has said.

The new interest of these groups in public schools reflects a
significant shift in missionary strategy. It is now accepted wisdom that
the most fruitful targets of their efforts are young children, who are
thought to be more susceptible to conversion. The focus on schools stems
in part from the realization that students, especially in the younger
grades, invest a lot of authority in their school, and typically can’t
distinguish between what is taught in the school and what is taught by the school.
SNIP

The legal theory that these groups promote, which makes possible the
rise of church-school partnerships, hinges on several key arguments. The
first seeks to collapse claims about the freedom of religious exercise
into claims about the freedom of speech. The second argument makes a
strict distinction between private speech and publicly sponsored or
official speech. The third drastically minimizes the weight of peer
pressure or social coercion. And the fourth conceives a lack of religion
as just another religious view among many, and therefore not to be
favored over other religions.

When you put these premises together, you end up with the conclusion
that including religious groups in school does not involve an
establishment of religion in any meaningful sense, whereas excluding
them does involve the violation of their free-speech rights and thus
represents discrimination against religion. Justice Clarence Thomas ably
sums up this line of argument in a key 2001 Supreme Court decision, Good News Club v. Milford Central School.
On the one hand, he dismisses the idea that kindergartners might
falsely perceive the private speech of religious groups operating in the
school as coming from the school; on the other, he asserts that banning
these religious groups from school might be perceived by the community
at large as discrimination against religion in favor of secularism.

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About Me

"Blue" in Blue in the Bluegrass refers to my politics, not my state of mind, although being progressive-democratic in Kentucky is not for the faint of heart.
The Bluegrass Region of Kentucky is Central Kentucky, the area around Lexington. It's also sometimes known as the Golden Triangle, the region formed by Louisville in the west, Cincinnati in the north and Lexington in the east-south corner. This is the most economically advanced, politically progressive and aesthically beautiful area of the state. Also the most overpopulated by annoying yuppies and the most endangered by urban sprawl.
A Yellow Dog Democrat is one who will vote for even a yellow dog if it is running as a Democrat. I can't claim to be quite that fanatically partisan, especially since quite a few candidates who run as Democrats in Kentucky are more Republican than a lot of Republicans I can name.
But I do love the story Kentucky House leader Rocky Adkins never tires of telling about the old-timer in Eastern Kentucky who was once accused of being willing to vote for Satan if Satan ran as a Democrat. Spat back the old-timer:
"Not in a primary, I wouldn't!"
Amen.